US Educators Racist? School-To-Prison Pipeline Targeted By Arne Duncan Often A Diversity, Training Problem
Ahmed Mohamed may be the most well-known student to be arrested at school, but he certainly wasn't the first. In Milledgeville, Georgia, there was Salecia Johnson, a 6-year-old handcuffed after having a temper tantrum. In Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, there was the unidentified 15-year-old booked after throwing Skittles on the bus. In San Jose, California, there was Adrian Crosby, an autistic 13-year-old charged after writing his name on the school sidewalk.
"It was horrendous," said Aida Crosby, Adrian's mother. "It is a very huge, bizarre thing culminating into [the fact that] now, my child has a criminal record."
As school shootings have increased in frequency, so has the police presence on grade and high school campuses. But in some places, due to everything from budget cuts to department loyalty, officers have begun to arrest students for lesser crimes, taking over administrators' role as the primary disciplinarians. Studies have found minority students are disproportionately affected by these systems, and they're often the most vulnerable to what's been termed the "school-to-prison pipeline," in which kids get arrested at a young age for something minor and end up spending their lives in jail for serious offenses later on.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan wants that trend to stop. In a speech Wednesday, he proposed that states and school districts curb student arrests and use the $15 billion saved to fund teacher raises at high-poverty schools. “Every day, as a society, we allow far too many young people to head down a road that ends in wasted potential. And sometimes, we are complicit in that journey to nowhere,” he said. “We need to do more to change that.”
Advocates say the school-to-prison pipeline may be real, but fixing it will require more than an Education Department initiative. Schools need to improve their environments, shift their policies and train their teachers to handle students without police intervention. They argue it could be symptomatic of a larger issue of institutionalized racism and misguided law enforcement.
"Too often, police are called in for things that are school crimes against school code -- not penal code," said Bryan Joffe, project director of education and youth development for the American Association of School Administrators, a professional organization in Alexandria, Virginia. "There's a role for police and security on our grounds, but it's not about policing the students in the building."
The number of school resource officers climbed nearly 40 percent between 1997 and 2007, with certain groups of students arrested more than others. Black students comprise less than one-fifth of the student population but represent one-third of students arrested for school-related incidents. Disabled students make up 12 percent of enrollment but 25 percent of school arrests, according to data from the Office of Civil Rights.
The issue of school security entered the spotlight after the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, that killed 12 students and one teacher. It re-emerged as a national problem after a 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, resulted in the deaths of 20 first-grade students and six adults. In the year and a half after the Sandy Hook massacre, there were more than 70 school shootings, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Aida Crosby said she was shocked when she got the phone call from police that her son had been accused of vandalism at school. Adrian's citation -- which NBC reported appears on his record as an arrest -- US Educators Racist? School-To-Prison Pipeline Targeted By Arne Duncan Often A Diversity, Training Problem:
